


Hysteria

by SphinxTheRiddle



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Allusions to PTSD, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Gen, Heartbreak, the ss spends too much time alone and feels some feelings(tm)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-12 21:54:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16004072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SphinxTheRiddle/pseuds/SphinxTheRiddle
Summary: In a moment of hysteria, it occurs to you that you should have died.A snapshot in time in the life of a Sole Survivor and what it means to live on the echoes.





	Hysteria

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Characters and other recognizable things in this story belong to their respective copyright holders. The only things that I own are the original characters and plot of this story. I am making no money from writing this fan work. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> I'm apparently alive. 
> 
> Hilariously, I wrote this fanfic as a final essay for a class. College professors are lit, I tell you.
> 
> Main things to know here: I was thinking of Nora as I wrote this, but I tried to leave details ambiguous enough that it could also be from Nate's perspective, if that's your preferred character to play as! This is also marked as complete since it's technically a stand-alone piece; if y'all are interested in what else I've written about this version of my SS, I'm happy to post more~
> 
> Finally, this contains allusions to PTSD, anxiety / panic attacks, and general angst. If that's something that might trigger you, consider yourself duly warned!

In a moment of hysteria, it occurs to you that you should have died.

You stand in the remnants of a two-hundred-year-old trailer park when the thought slithers its way into your brain, expanding ominously as the horizon before you begins to roil. Radstorm, the logical part of your self supplies, even as the animal brain tenses for the impact. You try to shake the welling anxiety as you skirt your way around old world mobile homes, your old criminology training marking rust and mold and blood with clinical detachment. The first rule of survival was compartmentalization and it was a lesson you had learned long before the end of the world; the details only mattered if you were alive later to investigate.

Tricky word, that _if_. It stopped having any meaning the moment you exited cryo-containment.

But those are other thoughts you have no time to entertain. The roiling on the horizon has surged ever closer, clouds looming large and dark, tinged with a phosphorescent green every instinct in you physically recoils from. It has been about four months since you left – escaped? – the dead whispers of Vault 111; by now, the lethal weather of the Commonwealth was a well-known entity—the sort of bastard you learned to hate as much as you grudgingly respected. A bit like your brother-in-law, if you were being honest, but, well, the joke’s on him. _Death’s a valid forfeiture. I win_ , the detached part of your brain supplies. Old world training and apocalyptic experience kept that thought from spiraling further than it ought, but that it even made it through the filter was worrying. You only kept your win if you survived.

If. Goddamn _if_.

“Stop it.” And you were muttering to yourself now, a sure sign that you’ve been away from Sanctuary for too long. You try to conjure up the mental calendar you kept, leafing through dates as you pick through decayed sheet metal. A brief _‘avoid tetanus’_ flits through the filter while you collect the sturdiest pieces you can find and retrofit them against the shattered windows of a dull teal trailer. They won’t soak up the radiation, but they will at least offer additional coverage from the wind and rain. The lightning would be a beast all its own, but there wasn’t much you could do about the whims of nature; previous anti-rain dances in the moonlight had thus far proven ineffective, and you suspected your lucky rabbit foot was actually leftover squirrel bits. Not that you were in a position to be picky about your rodent parts: luck was luck.

_Usually._

At that thought, you hear the first surge of the storm. Your hands clench vein-taut around the tools you’d hefted from your pack to fit the sheet metal, old world airstrike sirens blaring in your mind. You are certain that now is not the time to panic, but the rolling dialogue in your head seems to disagree as it notes the crackling glow of radiation just above the cloud line. You have seen a fair enough sampling of radstorms by now, but you were only caught _outside_ in a radstorm once before, right after leaving the Vault. To say the memory was an unpleasant one would be an understatement; you still have the scars across your shoulders from the radiation burns. The echo of that memory is enough to choke down the frozen animal brain – no time for being a deer in the headlights – and you finish shoring up your shelter just as the rain starts to fall.

Covered as you are in your road leathers, you do not feel so much as hear the quiet zing as the rain touches you. Your fingers are the one exception, tingling as you open the door to the trailer and lock yourself inside; it’s an odd sensation sometimes, the way physical memory can catch you in the chest just as hard as any emotional trigger. No sooner are you stripping off the wet leathers when those stinging droplets bring you back to Before. Autumnal red and gold overlay decayed brown and green for a flash, and instead of used Jet inhalers scattered on the floor and gray mold blooming on a rotted table, you see the pristine white of new linoleum and sprays of gardenia in glass vases. November rains fall in sheets out the window and you are looking for Gladys and Pierce because, yes, you remember now. You remember this mobile park and when it went up just outside of Sanctuary; you remember kindly new neighbors and plans to bring Shawn here for Trick-or-Treating. Where are they again? You could’ve sworn you had seen everyone just moments ago and—

_Not real_ , your brain breaks in.

Not real; and you find yourself mouthing the words as the real world comes again into focus. The leathers lay haphazardly on the floor in a pile. Your arms quake in the effort to pull on the flannels and jeans you brought along. You have a moment of pure terror when the thunder slams out from the sky, dropping to the floor the way you wish you could jump into the grave. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know how to ride out these episodes as they come—aware of the definition of “shellshock”, aware that now is better than later, because later might be in the midst of a Supermutant nest. Now meant tears. Later meant entrails.

At some point, you stopped caring so much about the distinction.

Because you should have died. It comes back to you now as you fumble with the holotape from your spouse – the one possession from the old world this new one cannot steal –, slamming it into the PipBoy on your wrist: the Vault, your baby, your spouse, the intruder, the gunshot. The way you awoke from cryo with a snarl still in your throat and frozen tears tracking your face. You see every lost chance, every could-have-been-should-have-been lost in moments of magnitude. An eerie, almost mechanical-sounding strike of lightning flashes as if to punctuate the moment, and you can taste the ozone in the back of your throat like blood.

A chorus of baby gurgles and _Hi, Honey! We love you~_ meet your ears as the tape plays and you imagine all that this world has left. You never thought the philosophy courses would mean a damn, but here you are, trying to wrap your mind around what one does with the Aftermath. You imagine Hancock in Goodneighbor dressed in his rebel blues, Deacon leading Synths down the freedom trail, Piper with her printing press, and every other new face in this old, old world overlain by polaroid stills, edges blurred. Each of them built from the ashes of what once was, preserving what little they had left, as if half-remembered scraps could save the human race from cannibalizing itself over and over again. As if the Great War was not an impassable gulf, but a speed-bump on the road towards tomorrow. As if, as if, as _if._

That damnable word.

Cradling the soft light of your PipBoy to your face, you close your eyes and remember your Commonwealth—the world immortalized in snowglobes and propaganda. You find that your spouse’s face becomes less defined in memory as you spend more time in the new reality. You find that this does not incite the same panic it once did. You aren’t sure what to make of that. You aren’t sure what happens when memory fades to echoes. And you wonder if that’s the whole point—that the echoes are what post-war humanity attempts to grasp. That the echoes of _something greater_ are all humanity has ever been able to grasp.

That brings a sobbing laugh to the surface. Because this sort of generational foolishness requires an appreciation for puzzles you’ve never had. Because history is a Thing suddenly tangible—a Thing you can touch, can hold, can preserve. History is you walking through Diamond City and remembering Fenway. History is the irony of a Behemoth living in the swan pond at the Common. It’s Sanctuary rebuilt and fortified. It’s knowing why you hold on to what you hold. It’s that origin waking in Vault 111—memory number one in a reality of crossed wires.

It’s the moment of hysteria that defines your steps when the storm clears.


End file.
